About Jaquetta White

“The Bobby Bones Show,” which made its Nashville debut Monday on Clear Channel's WSIX, will expand to 35 country radio stations Feb. 25. The national launch will feature Brad Paisley as the show’s first guest.

Demand exploded for The Lumineers' song “Ho Hey” after it appeared in an episode of CW’s “Hart of Dixie” last year. (photo: Shelley Mays / File / The Tennessean)

The opening chords begin playing just as Barney gets down on one knee to ask for Robin’s hand in marriage. By the time she says, “Yes” and they embrace for a kiss, the first verse of “Let Your Heart Hold Fast” is under way.

For fans of CBS’ “How I Met Your Mother,” the engagement of two of the show’s lead characters was a momentous occasion. It was just as important to Fort Atlantic, the band whose star rose after its song was used in the scene.

“We had almost 400,000 views and 15,000 downloads of the track in the week following,” said Paul Roper, president of the band’s Nashville-based label, Dualtone Records. “We didn’t have a ton going on before that placement. Now we have a story we’re going to take and tell to the rest of the industry, especially radio.”

This strategy of placing musical works on television shows and in motion pictures, commercials and video games is becoming an ever more important tool for record labels, artists, songwriters and music publishers grappling with how to make money on a product that customers have become less willing to buy.

“It’s a great revenue driver and that’s one of the reasons it’s become so popular for publishers and labels and artists,” Roper said. “It can really shine a light on a developing artist and on a key song.”

Commercials for cars, big-budget love stories and television shows like ABC’s “Nashville” provide opportunities for Nashville artists, songwriters, labels and publishers to squeeze new dollars from the sluggish market for music by selling what are known as “synchronization rights,” sometimes for hundreds of thousands of dollars per use.

“It is the one area that is growing and you actually have a little bit of control over your destiny,” said Kent Earls, executive vice president and general manager of Universal Music Publishing Group. “The decline of CD sales — I can’t do anything about that. But actively pitching our music for synchronization use, we make it a priority here. It’s a big priority for us.”

Total sales rise

Overall music sales, which include albums and singles in digital and physical formats, climbed 3.1 percent to 1.66 billion units in 2012 from 1.61 billion in 2011. The growth was buoyed by sales of digital singles, according to the Nielsen Co. & Billboard’s 2012 Music Industry Report. Meanwhile, fewer people bought albums, the more expensive product. Those sales fell 4.4 percent.

That dynamic sets the stage for investment in synchronization. It is difficult to track the rise or fall in sync licensing, because unlike mechanical and performance rights, there are no pre-established rates for synchronization rights. They are, instead, negotiated on an individual basis between the music publisher and the visual production company, in most cases.

Synchronization is not a new area for the music industry. But it has expanded in the past decade as the once hard line between musicians, writers and composers who work exclusively for television and those who don’t has rapidly eroded.

“We’ve gradually started to move towards music directors really looking out for outside songs and songs from other categories,” said Karl Braun, a partner with the Nashville office of Hall Booth Smith PC. “Now, the music directors for these shows are priding themselves on going out and finding interesting and independent music to sync with these shows to really give the shows their own identity and uniqueness.”

There is dual benefit in selling synchronization rights for recording artists, record labels and music creators and publishers. First, the one-time payment for use provides an easy revenue source. But connecting a song with a visual product also has the potential to drive interest to both known and unknown artists and increase sales of their music.

Grammy-nominated band The Lumineers didn’t have any music for sale when its song “Ho Hey” appeared in an episode of CW’s “Hart of Dixie” last year. That didn’t stop fans from trying to buy the song.

“It really created this frenzy of activity online as people were clamoring for a place they could find the song,” Roper said. “The only thing available was a live performance of the band performing a house show. The social media views shot up to a couple hundred thousand. That was a great indicator for us that we had something special here.”

“What we saw was that people were almost rabid about trying to find this song,” Roper said. “It was a great building block for us to use as a catalyst.”

New revenue source

Even old songs are finding a place in the synched world. Publishers are particularly opening their song catalogs to advertisers. A Volkswagen commercial featuring Johnny Cash’s “Dirty Old Egg Suckin’ Dog” was a “really big earner” for Universal, Earls said.

“Big-budget movies is what you shoot for,” said Earls, whose company recently has placed a Keith Urban song in a major motion picture. “TV shows pay pretty good, but not nearly as much as a big budget movie and advertising.”

Such familiar songs can command six-figure payments in major advertising campaigns, Braun said.

With so much cash on the line, artists are vigilant about protecting their music from misuse. Nashville rock band The Black Keys, for instance, has sued The Home Depot, Pizza Hut and Pinnacle Entertainment for using its songs in advertisements for their products.

Nashville artists in particular have recently found success selling their rights for commercial, television and film use, Braun said. Historically country music hadn’t been considered sync-friendly, Earls said.

“This used to be a Los Angeles phenomenon. The sync world was pretty much concentrated in L.A.,” Braun said. “But so many writers are coming to Nashville from L.A. now, that the word has gotten out and it has become a Nashville thing.”

Programming is dedicated to country music fans

As it continues a bid to woo viewers from television by offering original content of its own, online video giant YouTube is launching a channel today dedicated to country music and its fans with programming created and produced by Nashville artists and firms.

YouTube has partnered with Los Angeles entertainment firm Greenlight Media & Marketing LLC to create the Country Now channel. Greenlight has agreed to a one-year deal to produce at least eight shows, or about 20 hours of original programming, for the channel.

Troy Tomlinson is president and CEO of Sony ATV. (photo: John Partipilo / The Tennessean)

Executive Q&A: Troy Tomlinson

Troy Tomlinson entered the music industry at the very bottom of the totem pole. As a “tape copy boy” at a music publishing company in Nashville in the 1980s, he spent his days copying demo songs to cassette tapes and dropping them off to record labels with the hope that the tapes would make it into the hands of hit-making recording artists. Nearly three decades later, hit-makers seek out Tomlinson. The president and CEO of Sony/ATV Music Publishing Nashville oversees more than 50 songwriters who have penned hit songs for everyone from Taylor Swift to Reba McEntire. Tomlinson also took the reins of the Country Music Association’s board this month. He will serve as chairman through the end of the year.

Tomlinson sat down recently with The Tennessean’s Jaquetta White to discuss his love of music lyrics and his goals for country music in the new year.

Music publishing is one of the facets of the music business that people, even those living in Music City, don’t know a lot about. What do music publishers do?

We’re the backroom guy. We’re the guy who provides the material to build the fire with. The fire is associated with the singer. We’re back there throwing wood and gasoline on the fire. The job of the publisher is basically these points: To exploit, meaning to pitch songs; then, to license them; and then, to collect the money on behalf of our writer. And also to protect, meaning we register the copyright and we fight, sometimes in court, battles for our writers’ songs.Continue reading →

Nearly 565,000 people visited the museum in the year, an increase of 15 percent from 2011. Attendance was boosted by a trio of exhibits that together had broad appeal, museum director Kyle Young said.

The year featured exhibits about Swift, Cline and the Bakersfield Sound, a raw form of country music emanating from California in the 1960s that has faded some in popularity but drew thousands of curious country fans. Continue reading →

Jeff Tweel is the COO of TweelX, a Nashville company that offers fans, record labels and radio stations the opportunity to buy and sell shares of song publishing rights on a stock exchange-type market. (photo: Larry McCormack / The Tennessean)

If you’ve ever heard a song and known instantly it would be a hit or said you wish you had a dollar for every time you heard a particularly catchy tune, TweelX might be a company after your own heart.

The Nashville startup plans to sell shares of songs, in the form of a percentage of publishing royalties, to individuals, record labels and anyone else willing to part with $100 or more per investment.

“It’s kind of like speculating in stock futures,” said Jeff Tweel, who created the company with his son, Chase Tweel, and serves as its chief operating officer. “Or, as my Texas friends say, ‘Finding oil while it’s still in the ground.’” Continue reading →

Jim Lauderdale wins the Inspiration Award at the SESAC Awards in 2010. The Nashville-based performing rights organization has been sold to a private equity firm for $600 million, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. (photo: Jae S. Lee / The Tennessean)

Nashville-based performing rights organization SESAC has been sold to a private equity firm for $600 million, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

The company, originally the Society of European Stage Authors & Composers, had been for sale since early 2012. The buyer is Rizvi Traverse Management, a Birmingham, Mich.-based company, according to the story, which cites anonymous sources.Continue reading →

Paula Roberts, executive director of the National Museum of African American Music, studies a model of the $47.5 million project planned for the corner of Rosa L. Parks Boulevard and Jefferson Street. (File/The Tennessean)

Cultural showcase planned for North Nashville is millions shy of goal

A year after officials announced that the National Museum of African American Music was on its way toward a 2013 opening date, the effort is still millions of dollars away from reaching its fundraising goal.

Paula Roberts, executive director of the foundation that will oversee the museum, says it is too soon to discuss when the facility will break ground.

“Proper planning for any startup venture remains vital to a successful outcome. It would be premature to discuss dates, events or even milestones for the project at this time,” Roberts, who was hired in 2009 to lead the African American History Foundation of Nashville Inc., said in an email. “When we have additional information, we will share it in a method best suited for the organization.”

That is a different tone than the one expressed in September 2011, when the foundation said in a news release that the project was “on-track towards a planned opening of 2013.”

Satellite radio will pay higher rate starting next year

A three-judge federal panel has ruled to impose a modest increase on the rate for royalty payments that satellite radio companies must make to songwriters, music publishing companies and recording artists for use of their work on the air.

The Copyright Royalty Board decided to raise the rate to 9 percent of gross revenue in 2013, from 8 percent. The fee will then increase by half a percentage point every year until 2017, according to the ruling. The panel convenes once every five years to decide how much companies like Sirius XM should pay to SoundExchange, a performance rights organization that collects royalties on behalf of copyright owners.